SpaceX’s Extra Terrestrial Datacenter Vision: Elon Musk Calls It ‘Easier Than People Think’

• Musk estimated Starship could support launching roughly 10 million tons of payload to orbit annually, producing a terawatt per year of solar-powered AI compute.
• SpaceX is meanwhile racing toward one of the largest IPOs in history.
• SpaceX is preparing for the 12th uncrewed test flight of its next-generation Starship rocket this week on May 21.

Elon Musk said Tuesday that building data centers in orbit is far more feasible than many realize and represents the future of scaling artificial intelligence far beyond Earth’s limits.

Speaking at the Forbes Innovator 250 Celebration, Musk pointed to SpaceX’s existing fleet of more than 10,000 Starlink satellites as proof that large-scale orbital infrastructure is already routine. With Starship, the company will soon launch over 10,000 advanced communication satellites per year, he said, delivering 10 to 100 times today’s capability. Yet AI satellites will dominate in tonnage, he added.

“Data center in space is much easier than people may think,” Musk told Forbes. He noted that human civilization uses less than a trillionth of the sun’s energy output. “We here on Earth, we are like microbes on a dust mote compared to the sun,” he added.

Musk estimated Starship could support launching roughly 10 million tons of payload to orbit annually, producing a terawatt per year of solar-powered AI compute—twice the average electricity consumption of the entire United States. “We’re not breaking any physics here,” he said. “This is all achievable.”

To reach petawatt scale, he proposed a lunar base equipped with a mass driver to manufacture solar panels and radiators on the Moon, dwarfing Earth’s entire economy.

SpaceX’s Efforts Towards AI Satellites

The plan builds on SpaceX’s February merger with Musk’s AI startup called xAI and regulatory filings for large constellations of specialized AI satellites featuring vast solar arrays and radiators.

SpaceX is meanwhile racing toward one of the largest IPOs in history. The company is targeting a Nasdaq listing as early as June 12 under ticker SPCX, with analysts discussing a $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion valuation. The offering could raise $50-75 billion to accelerate Starship production and orbital AI infrastructure.
SpaceX has forged an unparalleled dominance in global spaceflight. In 2025, the company completed 165 orbital launches with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle—roughly 51% of every orbital mission flown worldwide—while handling more than 85% of all U.S. launches and deploying the overwhelming majority of satellites placed into orbit that year.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is preparing for the 12th uncrewed test flight of its next-generation Starship rocket this week on May 21.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around SPACEX trended within the ‘extremely bullish’ territory, coupled with ‘extremely high’ levels of retail chatter.

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